[lbo-talk] Deconstructionism in contemporary leftish discourse

Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
Fri Jan 16 12:14:18 PST 2015


On Fri, January 16, 2015 2:01 pm, JOANNA A. wrote:
>
> I was in grad school when deconstructionism/pomo hit, and I went and
> studied Greek and Latin to get away from it.

There is a sense of 'deconstruct' which I have always found useful. You might gloss it as 'running construction in reverse' -- that is, viewing the text as a made object and trying to work back to the conceptual, emotional, cultural, political matrix that molded it.

The disadvantage of this approach is that in order to 'deconstruct' say Aeschylus in this sense you need to know quite a lot about ancient Greece. In this regard comp-lit departments tend to fall down on the job.

There is another sense of 'deconstruct' which might be glossed as 'debunk'. This is much easier. Aeschylus? Just another apologist for slavery.

-- Michael Smith

It is very easy for someone to be good at math; most of the time the kind of math that economists do would not impress a mathematician, but it is enough to impress people around them in the school of social sciences. -- Thomas Piketty



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